Group of lawmakers demands to try Mikhail Gorbachev for complicity in USSR breakup

A group of State Duma members from different political factions has prepared a request addressed to Russia’s Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika. The lawmakers demand to conduct a prosecutor’s investigation into the events that took place in the period of USSR breakup.

In their request, the deputies note that Soviet citizens voted at a referendum for keeping the state’s integrity, but top Soviet leadership committed illegal actions, which led to the country’s breakup. The initiators of the investigation recall that November 4, 1991, the directorate for supervision over the execution of law on state security under the USSR Prosecutor’s General Office filed a case against USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev. However, on the next day, the Prosecutor’s Office under pressure of the last Soviet leader cancelled the order on institution of criminal proceedings.The parliamentarians expect that over the request and the following investigation, criminal cases would be filed, in particular, against the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the Izvestia newspaper reports on Thursday.

Gorbachev is accused of creating the USSR State Council and chairing this institution, which was not stipulated by the Soviet Constitution as a government authority. It was the State Council that adopted orders on recognizing the independence of Baltic Soviet republics, although such decisions could not be made even by legitimate authorities.

Among the initiators of the request are United Russia deputies Yevgeny Fyodorov and Anton Romanov, members of the Communist Party (KPRF) Igan Nikitchuk and Oleg Denisenko, as well as representative of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) faction Mikhail Degtyaryov.

“It’s very important to do this, since until today there were no legal estimates given to the fact of breaking up a state,” Degtyaryov noted. “Even today, we are facing the consequences of developments of 1991. People in Kiev are dying and will be dying further due to the fault of those, who made the decision to destroy the country in the Kremlin many years ago.”

The lawmakers also noted in their request that such crimes did not have a term of limitation, and Gorbachev himself currently does not have any immunity that would prevent criminal prosecution.